#151 - Labels: Helpful or Harmful?

Labels are everywhere: reactive dog, bad pet parent, confident trainer, resilient learner. They’re meant to simplify things, and while they can be helpful, sometimes they do the opposite.

In this episode, Emily and Ellen unpack how labels shape our expectations, our compassion, and our sense of what’s possible. They explore when labels can be useful shorthand, and when they turn into invisible cages that weigh us (and our pets) down.

This is a reflective, nuance‑forward conversation about identity, learning history, environment, and why describing what we see is often far more powerful than naming what we judge.

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 3 Key Takeaways 

1️⃣ Labels are tools, not truths - Labels can help us communicate efficiently, but they become harmful when we mistake them for fixed identities or predictions about the future.

2️⃣ Descriptive language restores possibility - Shifting from labels to observable behaviors helps us see context, environment, and change pathways more clearly.

3️⃣ Even “positive” labels carry baggage - Compliments like resilient, easy, or smart can quietly create pressure, burnout, and unfair expectations.

For the full episode show notes, including the resources mentioned in this episode, go here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ellen: What I think is so insidious about, about labels is Humans are really good about grabbing them when they weren't for them, Nobody has to explicitly say You are a bad pet parent. What I see so often is the connotation. I have a lot of clients working with separation anxiety. They think that if they leave their dog and their dog has a hard time, it makes them a bad pet parent because that's the rhetoric out in the world.

How could you leave your dog to have a hard time? And so the label gets ascribed. Because of these things and it doesn't account for, yeah, I know that your dog, I had a hard time and I know that that wasn't ideal. And also you needed medical attention and you made the right decision to go get medical attention, like your dog needs you here tomorrow, that that is what needs to happen. So I have so many clients that come to me and they're carrying such a weight because they have seen someone else be labeled that. Without knowing the entire story, and what's unfortunate is I, I very rarely get clients that label themselves the things that we would consider are positive.

[00:01:03] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:20] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:21] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

 Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:01:42] Emily: I have a question for y'all. Have you ever caught yourself saying things like, I'm a bad pet parent, or My dog's just stubborn? Those tiny phrases they're called labels and they can sneak into how we think, how we act, how we care for our pets, are beliefs about what is possible, what we are capable of, our pets are capable of.

The people in our lives are capable of. So today we're gonna dive into the world of labels, how they can be both a helpful shorthand or also a huge barrier to growth. Labels can shape how we see ourselves, our pets, our clients, our family, our neighbors, randos that pass you by on the street which means that they can be either empowering, like calling yourself a professional trainer or calling your dog resilient.

Or they can box us in making it even harder for us to see the full picture. All of the beautiful complexity of who we are and who everybody else in our life is. So by the end of this episode, you will have a, a pretty good idea of when labels help and when they harm, how to use sensory descriptive language instead of judgmental labels, and how to reframe labels to support growth, both for you and the learners in your care. I know that you have said this many times, Ellen and I, and I hardcore agree with it, even though I am the person who dives into nuance a lot. I have heard you say on more than one occasion, I am so tired of nuance. And I think that is a really important thing to bring up in the context of this conversation about labels because the reason that. We as humans gravitate towards using labels is because they make things simpler. They're shortcuts. And in a world that is really, really complicated, those shortcuts can be so nice, so helpful, just simple, easy.

You just grab them 'cause they're available. So, so I feel you, I feel you really hard on that.

[00:03:44] Ellen: my tolerance for nuance goes down when the challenges in the world go up, which is when we need the most nuance, right? That, that for me is very much a sign of where I am in my, in my self-care journey, which I will say is directly correlated to this conversation because the. Other day it has been bananas.

2025 has been bananas. It has been nonstop. What is happening and like there's in the actual collective society that we are all experiencing. And then also my own, just personal life. It has been one thing after another, what is happening. And the other day I had that very own thought creep in of I'm not a very good pet parent. I immediately thought, you know what, no, I feel like I'm not a very good pet parent because those are two very different things. If I was to take a objective assessment of how my dogs are doing in time and space, there are things that we can improve on. There are things that I do see big gaps, particularly in the last couple of months.

I have two senior dogs. One has ended up in the er, the other one has some stuff going on that we gotta figure out, but like, I'm so tired. Just keep it together. Thank you. Calling myself a bad pet parent is not helpful. That is, that is negating everything that I do do for my pet. But to flip it and say I feel like I'm a bad pet parent is just acknowledging the fact that I wish I could be doing more for my dogs right now.

And like I can't. I'm just so tired, like deep in the bones, tired.

I think it's important that we look at those and we can use those, and I can use that as a shorthand for my partner to say, I feel like I'm a bad pet parent to say I'm drowning. I'm not giving an identity to myself. I'm not making a judgment of my behavior.

I am just articulating like I wish I could do more. When my partner is able to hear that, he is able to say, okay, what can I take off your plate? What can we swap? What might be lower taxing things for you? What are higher taxing things for me? What can we do to level the load a little bit? But I see the same thing with. Our clients all of the time when it comes to their own pets. I see it with mentees and their clients. I see it with other professionals who are not in our program and the way they speak about their clients on social media. I think there are a lot of times where we are going to attribute far too much to the individual and not enough to the environment.

And I wanna be clear, this might be a very westernized mindset. But I think Susan, Dr. Friedman has done us a lot of good by bringing the Unlabel Me mindset to this field.

[00:06:30] Emily: Yeah, the way she talks about it is brilliant, and I will say that the first session of the first course was a free course called Parrot Behavior Analysis Solutions. And at that point I was feeling really beaten down by. The ways that I constantly was ending up in conflict with animals and all the various ways that I worked with animals and how the rhetoric at the time that I was hearing over and over again is we have to hurt them to help them. We have to make them uncomfortable to help them, and I hated it. And the first lesson was about labels.

In other words, these assigning of identities um, who you are as an individual constructs the stories that we tell ourselves about why a learner is behaving the way they are, overt behaviors, the the behaviors that we can see, measure and assess, and covert behaviors which all labels and constructs are basically assumptions about covert behaviors based on whatever overt behaviors we're seeing.

And that lesson. Blew my mind and also resonated so deeply with me because it really got to the core of everything that was breaking my heart about the way that I was currently working with animals. And I think the, that, that core is that when we assign a label to a person, to a human or a non-human, like if we call a dog reactive or we call.

A child lazy or something like that. We stop describing what's actually happening and we're assigning an identity to them, which becomes an assumption about who they are, what they are and are not capable of, and what, whether or not we should even bother trying something other than. What we've been trying and that really got to the core of it, not just for the way that I was working with animals, but also the things that I felt grief about myself and how I thought there was something profoundly wrong with me because of the labels that had been ascribed to me by other people, and how my lived experience didn't perfectly align with those labels, and so I assumed there must be something wrong with me.

A brief example of this is I wrote a blog article a while back, actually now about how everybody called me extroverted. I'm really gregarious and I talk a lot and I'm loud and all of that stuff. And so I tried to live up to that label and I kept failing hard at it. And I was like, what is wrong with me?

Why am I like this? I'm I'm, I'm an extroverted person. And then I go out and I interact with a bunch of people and then I just have a meltdown, like, what is wrong with me? And there was nothing wrong with me. The label was the thing that was wrong. I'm not an extrovert. I'm actually. Quite introverted in that I need a lot of alone time to recharge my batteries.

And even though I enjoy spending time with people, it's very draining. And I never, I didn't have the opportunity to learn that about myself and explore what actually works for me. Until I learned from Dr. Friedman that that label was the problem, not who I am. I was not the problem, the label was the problem.

And that's just one example of how I. Labels can be really harmful.

[00:09:45] Ellen: What I think is so insidious about, about labels is one, Humans are really good about grabbing them when they weren't for them, like one it shouldn't. Nobody has to explicitly say You are a bad pet parent. What I see so often is the connotation. So I have a lot of clients working with separation anxiety. They think that if they leave their dog and their dog has a hard time, it makes them a bad pet parent because that's the rhetoric out in the world.

How could you leave your dog to have a hard time? And so the label gets ascribed. Because of these things and it doesn't account for, yeah, I know that your dog, I had a hard time and I know that that wasn't ideal. And also you needed medical attention and you made the right decision to go get medical attention, like your dog needs you here tomorrow, that that is what needs to happen. So I have so many clients that come to me and they're carrying such a weight because they have seen someone else be labeled that. Without knowing the entire story, and what's unfortunate is I, I very rarely get clients that label themselves the things that we would consider are positive.

Not that those can't be problematic in and of themselves.

I say that Leica is perfect because Leica is practically perfect in every way. She might as well be Mary Poppins at this point. And I also know because of learning from Susan that that is gonna predispose me to put her into situations that are harder because she can handle it, but it doesn't mean she should have to.

So when we're looking at these things, there is going to be a pro and con, whether or not we use a label that we think is a good thing. Like there are lots of labels that people have ascribed to me, and they mean them as a compliment, and the fallout of them is huge.

[00:11:32] Emily: Yes.

[00:11:32] Ellen: It adds a lot to my plate, the expectations that people have of me.

I appreciate the compliment. And also it comes with baggage. So we wanna be really careful about the way that we use these. We wanna shorthand them in some way, shape, or form.

I think the second part of that is we have mentees, we have clients that come to us and they want help. We have mentees that come to us and they want help. The thing that is so hard. Particularly, I think in an unregulated field, I don't, I haven't worked in a regulated field, so I truly cannot tell you if this is just a human problem or not.

Is that the language that I hear so often is I can't call myself a trainer. I'm not comfortable calling myself a trainer. I can't be a behavior consultant. I'm not a behavior consultant.

And then there's. I have yet to have somebody who has been able to take that and then tell me what that means. So when, what has to happen for you to take on this identity, to take on this part of you that you want to take on?

Like, you want to be able to label, label yourself these different professions instead of focusing on trying to get this title. What we can do instead is focus on getting the skills that you ascribe to this title. So what does it mean to be a trainer? What does a trainer do? When you tell me what the trainer does, then what we do in Pet Pro is help our mentees practice.

Those skills tell it becomes ingrained harmoniously in their own identity.

[00:13:01] Emily: Yeah, for sure. All of that resonates so hard and I think you really like, I wanna pull something out that you said and, and ruminate it mom on it more because it's so important and that is that like even labels that people perceive as being positive or complimentary can still have baggage.

And that is. That that is so true. And I, I did the same thing that you do with Leika. I did the same thing with Miley where I just, I used to call her my perfect puppy, that she's so perfect and it was coming from a good place of like after. Sharing my life with Brie, who had a lot of struggles as a, as a formerly feral dog, it feels so relieving to have a puppy who is pro-social and resilient and joyful and unafraid and cur, you know, all of those labels, right?

But by calling her a perfect puppy, that set us up for well, it set me up for emotional devastation when she like went through her big girl heat cycle and came out the other side with some grumpy feelings. And I had to process that, that like grief of like, oh, I don't have a perfect puppy anymore.

It's like nobody, that is so not fair for me to expect perfection from Miley. And also I set myself up to have a harder time than I needed to have about her going through a totally normal process. And I know it's a normal process and I still felt more devastated than I needed to because of that. And.

And the same thing. When people call me smart or intelligent, they mean it as a compliment, and that has so much baggage. It is so emotionally complicated for me because. As you know very well, there are very, some very specific skill sets in which I have above average capabilities. And also there are other specific skill sets that I have below average.

I have like trying over and over and over in all these different ways. Can't figure out how to do payroll. Right. For so like I, yes, I have some advantages and also I have deficits and when people use the label smart, I. It makes me anxious about now you have this expectation for me to nail everything out of the part or hit.

Hit everything out of the park all of the time because you're not seeing the ways in which I have deficits. You're expecting me to be above average in every skillset, and that's not only impractical for me, that's impractical for everybody. So when people tell me that I'm smart, or they tell me that they feel intimidated by me because I'm smart, the first thing I ask them is, what does smart mean to you?

Because I don't know what, I genuinely don't know what you mean when you tell me that I'm smart, and it makes me very anxious because then I feel like you're going to expect me to be really, really good at everything and I am really, really not good at a lot of things. And that kind of led into a conversation that Allie and I had a couple days ago about the difference between self-limiting beliefs and robust punishment histories for trying things.

And it was like, what, like what labels are we using in this conversation? Not, not in that parti, let me rephrase it because it sounds like we were saying that about each other, but that's not what was happening. We were just talking in general about what self-limiting beliefs look like versus what a, a punishing learning history looks like and the.

The really interesting part of that conversation was what are the labels that are being used here that are contributing to a self-limiting belief? And what are the labels that are being used to deny trivialize or a erase a, a learning history filled with punishment? And how are those two things related to each other and that.

Felt really, really helpful to me and eye-opening to me as we were sort of like hashing this out together of what that looks like because it helped me shift my thinking about my own beliefs about myself and like, oh, this is, this merits further examination of what things in my learning history are labels that have. That I have put on myself or that other people have put on me that impact my belief about what I am capable of and what things are labels where I need to do some more acknowledgement of like, how can I set myself up to have more reinforcement in my learning attempts so that I'm willing to try again. The labels really muddy up the difference between where we need to change 

Our expectations versus where we need to, to change our antecedent consequence arrangements. Right. And I think that's true for everybody. It's not just. I think that's a very common thing that happens to a lot of people. That wasn't just something that El Allie and I are unique in experiencing, right? 

[00:17:50] Ellen: Yeah, when we know something. So maybe you've never heard anybody talk about how harmful labels can be and you, this is the first time you were learning about it. It's the first time you've really sat with it. The first time you've really thought about what that might mean for you and your pet, or you and your clients, or you and your mentor or whatever combination of community you're in.

Because in Pet Pro I am often helping people negotiate with their own brains, trying to find a way to, to make it doable. We're not looking for perfection here, we're looking for doable. And so sometimes when we take those labels and we tweak them a little bit and we are comfortable taking that label on for ourself, knowing what it can mean, what could the fallout be, we can sometimes push to that next tier.

And so if you are in the, your example from the literally anything, the only thing you told me is what you just told me.

[00:18:45] Emily: Yeah.

[00:18:46] Ellen: If you. Instead say, what if I am resilient?

[00:18:51] Emily: Yeah.

[00:18:52] Ellen: What if I am more robust against punishment? What if I am, maybe I haven't to this day, taken on curiosity as an element of my identity, a label that I would give to myself, but what does it do for me if I say no?

I am a curious person.

[00:19:08] Emily: Yeah.

[00:19:08] Ellen: How does that change the things for us? And I think the second part when we're working with our pets is like, how does it change how we can show up for them?

[00:19:17] Emily: Yes.

[00:19:17] Ellen: Do the labels that we give them, help us show up for them in a way that we are proud about? So I will tell the. I mean past the day, she does, she will forever be practically perfect in every way.

She is perfect despite me, not because of me. She is one of the easiest dogs I have ever met in my entire life. She is like, I'm pointing to her, Y are listening to this. You can't see that. And I also know that she needs support, so she deserves support. That is one of the other labels. She has high support needs in some scenarios because that helps me balance the two things where I am.

I know that if she had to go to another home, she would be okay. I know that if, when things are stressful, she can handle it. She can cope with it. She comes out the other side and she does not carry that for the rest of her life, minus Griffey, who is the total opposite. Like we have to be very careful.

I know those things about her. I also know that just because she's practically perfect in every way does not mean she deserves less support.

[00:20:19] Emily: Yeah.

[00:20:20] Ellen: She is not the kid that is gonna get paired with all of the, the kids that are really hard to work with because she can.

[00:20:26] Emily: Yeah. And we see that both humans and non-humans get burned out when they are. Either they themselves are trying to live up to a label, or other individuals are expecting them to live up. To a label that becomes really, that just becomes exhausting and, and demoralizing and rife with really aversive experiences.

And you're absolutely right. Like what you said earlier about like being able to shift it from a statement to a question can be a really important. Way to sort of like, dig yourself out of that mindset. And I think that another, another facet of that, that's not so much asking a question, but having these realizations where it's like, wait a minute. I am a person who does X, Y, z. I know this. I can point to very specific multiple examples in the past of how I am capable of, I did execute this really well. So the question is, what is the difference? Why am I not able to execute that in this context? Versus another context and we can, we do the same thing with the pets that we work with.

Like instead of saying that this animal lacks resilience, for example, we're just picking on resilience today. I think it's just an easy label 'cause 'cause it comes up a lot in our job, but.

[00:21:55] Ellen: Because it comes up a lot in our job. And also well, some people do agree on that definition. We're not all using the same one.

[00:22:03] Emily: No, we're definitely not all using the same one, but it's like, okay, well in these contexts. This animal? Well, first of all, we have to ask what do we mean when we say resilience? But also in this context, this animal may not be showing a lot of resilience, but let's look at all these other contexts where this animal or this human has shown a lot of resilience and let's examine the differences between those two contexts.

And I think that's to connect dots for people. That's really ties into what you were saying earlier about. We're looking too much at the, per the individual instead of the environment. Like what are the environmental contextual differences that have elicited or set the stage for these very different behavioral responses from the same individual.

Right? So that kind of leads us into. What do we do with labels? Like how do we handle them? And I think we've sort of mentioned it in passing, but it bears repeating that when we use a label, we need to pause and make sure that we're very clearly defining what that means to us, what it looks like, how we're defining it, so that whoever is in the pool of language users who are using that label.

We all understand what we mean by that label, and we're all in agreement on that definition because like you said, the one of the many problems with labels is that when we don't define them, a lot of times we're using the same word or phrase and in our heads that means very different things from individual to individual.

So that's a lot like I can't tell you how many times. If we had a dollar for every time we asked, what does that look like to you? We would probably be very rich, because I know I at least ask that question multiple times a day to multiple learners. And I know you do too. And I know Allie does too, and I know Tiffany does too.

That's just a question we have to ask people all the time, like, what does that mean to you when you use that word or phrase? Right.

[00:23:59] Ellen: In my household, when. I tell my partner or my partner tells me, the dogs are in a mood. That means they're playful. We are likely to see a higher than baseline element of play. Leica is laughing. Griffey is wiggling. They are making jokes.

We are talking about joy, play, all of those things, pro-social, affiliative, that kind of stuff. When I say I'm in a mood, that is not what I mean at all. And so if I was to try and tell somebody my dogs are having the best day ever, they're in a mood, likely, the cultural context around that is gonna be, my dogs are irritable, they're cranky, they need more space, they need higher management, and that's the opposite of my house.

it really doesn't provide a shorthand until you clearly define that within the group of individuals that you are talking about. And so if I have a client that comes to me and they're like, my dog's reactive, I understand the internet you have been on because I have also been on the internet.

And I can also tell you after working with the number of dogs that I have worked with. I have no idea what that looks like because it could look like so many things. So like I need you to tell me what that means to you. I don't care if you and I would label these behaviors reactivity, or fear or aggression or any of those things.

I don't need to agree with you on the label. What I need to know is what it means to you. Because this client's reactivity could mean one thing. This client's reactivity could mean something else. This client's reactivity. Maybe something else. What I would label aggression. Somebody else might label something else.

And realistically I don't, that's not the part I care about. What I care about is that using our senses, we're able to observe the same thing and come to the same conclusions about what it is. And I think that's the tricky thing. To working in an unregulated industry is that each of us has to define if we wanna be a trainer, we wanna be a behavior consultant.

In the current, current day and age in 2025, each of us to some degree has to decide what that is for ourselves. Nobody else can tell me, yes, you are a trainer, or, no, you are not. Because I have looked at so many people in Pep Pro and been like. To me, you're a behavior consultant.

[00:26:16] Emily: Yeah.

[00:26:17] Ellen: Full stop. I have no question that you are a behavior consultant and you are not ready to take on that label for yourself, and that is okay, and I don't need to bully you into that.

So what if that is something that you want to be your own desire? What does that look like for you? What has to happen in order for you to be like, yes, this is who I am. This is a part of me.

[00:26:38] Emily: And that process of. Defining what labels and constructs mean in terms of overt behaviors that we can all see and observe together. It has an obnoxious, pretentious sounding name, which is operationalization. But I think whether or not you ever care to remember that word or want to try to tackle saying it is a moot point.

What matters is that, do you know how to do that prop? That process of operationalizing what you mean when you say those labels because for example. One of the many things that contributes to the feelings of imposter syndrome is that people haven't operationalized for themselves what they mean when they say, I want to be a trainer, or I want to be a behavior consultant.

It's vague and undefined, and so they're just relying on feeling of confidence as being the definition of like, I am this, this job, and my, my

[00:27:37] Ellen: Don't even get me started on the label of confidence. Oh my God. Oh my gosh. You wanna see me on a soapbox? 45 minute soapbox face, red sweat. Oh, I have.

[00:27:48] Emily: Right. Right. And so it's like, okay, instead of you defining your, your job title as dog trainer or behavior consultant or whatever based on your feelings of confidence what if we created a rubric of. Clearly operationalized skills and then you were able to kind of like tick all the boxes and be like, I actually do meet the criteria for all of these skills.

Ergo, I am a trainer, I am a behavior consultant regardless of how I feel about it. Right? And ironically, that process actually does usually change how people feel about it.

[00:28:28] Ellen: Yeah, and if it doesn't, if it doesn't, that's other good information. Back to your. Are we, are we having a disconnect in labels or are we having a disconnect in self-limiting beliefs, or are we having a learning history problem? Like sometimes it's not, it's not about the execution. Most of the time, it is about the execution and the repetition and doing the thing over and over and over again.

[00:28:53] Emily: Yes. Yeah, for sure. So I feel like that is where. So many aspiring professionals get stuck. It's just feeling like they can't own their title yet, but it's because they can't even clearly articulate to themselves what that title means, what it looks like, what skill sets are involved or included in that.

And I find it interesting how many people have big defensive feelings around those titles. Like I've had a couple of people, like for me, the, the. Jobs of trainer and behavior consultant are different. They have different job descriptions. One is not better than the other. It's just different. I don't consider myself a trainer because I don't train animals.

I consider myself a behavior consultant because I. Actually, I don't even consider myself a behavior consultant anymore because I don't even work with clients anymore. Consulting. Um, I consider myself a mentor now, but when I was working with clients, I considered myself a behavior consultant because I supported clients in their ability to train and support their pets.

But to me that's a very different job description with different skill sets than being a trainer who is working directly with the animals and. It has nothing to do with one being more important than the other. They're just different jobs I have felt so surprised that a few people have had big feelings about me differentiating between trainer and behavior consultant because their perception is that. One is better than the other. And so they're like, how dare you make people feel bad if they're just a trainer?

And I'm like, I'm not making people feel bad about, I never used the word just to describe trainers, like, that's your feelings. And it's like, that is good information. And also, this is why it's really important to operationalize our labels, because clearly we mean very different things by those terms.

[00:30:49] Ellen: Yeah, and I wear both hats. I waffle between all of them. I will waffle into my, my layman scientist hat sometimes. Also, I'm gonna take that hat mostly off and put on my pet parent hat sometimes. And then I'm gonna take that off and then I can put my trainer hat on and then I can take that off and I can put my behavior consultant hat on.

Because for me, the emphasis like the, the number one thing I'm paying attention to and all of those hats is going to change. And so it is important for me to be able to. Move through these different identities relatively smoothly, these different labels. But for me, I know when I say I'm showing up as a behavior consultant today that I'm showing up for the familial unit.

My emphasis is going to be on the pet parent. It is not gonna be on the pet because I know that if I can help the pet parent in order to support the pet, I have to support the parent in order to support the pet, I have to support the human. This is a non-negotiable, full stop, because that is not my dog.

That is not my bird. That is not my cat. That is not mine or my responsibility. Most of my clients are not in my state, and so there is, I have no power. To directly impact that animal's quality of life. When I have my trainer hat on, I'm Mo. I'm much more mechanical than I am when I am, have my behavior consultant hat on.

It's just a different way to view it. It's a different weight on different aspects of it and it comes and goes with the various things, but that's also an identity I've been building for 15 years. My labels have changed hugely over that time, and my definitions of those things have changed, and I also know that there are risks with all of those labels.

[00:32:33] Emily: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's important to be clear that we're not saying that labels are inherently bad. They are tools and like any tool, they can be useful if they're used in the appropriate context, if they're used well. And so, another thing that I see. With especially new professionals or professionals who may have been in the field for a long time, but are new to these concepts of overt and covert behaviors, labels and constructs, all of that stuff.

Is that, and I, and I definitely went through this phase too, of like when you first start learning about the stuff, then you're afraid to use labels or use constructs because you're like, oh God, I'm not. I'm not doing a good job of like being, observing overt behaviors. And it's like, that's not it either.

Like, it's not that you should never use labels because how unwieldy would conversations be if we didn't have any shorthands? If instead of saying. you know, This dog, I'm going to work with this dog who has aggression issues. We had to say, I'm gonna go work with this dog who every time they get within eight feet of a strange human, and also when they're having a particularly bad pain day, they will bark and lunge and they will, they have they'll bite.

Like enough to cause punctures that require stitches. Oh my God, that sentence just took me forever to say, right? Like we would never finish a conversation if we didn't have labels, right? We would never get anything done if we had to operationalize every single behavior every single time we talked about it.

The problem with labels is when we stop. Well, first of all, when we have not even defined for ourself what we mean by that label must le much less have that discussion with the people that we're talking to so that we make sure that we're all on the same page, drawing from the same pool of information that we all understand each other.

There's clarity in our communication, and I think. For me, what I have noticed is that more often than not, where labels are handy is describing past behavior. So if I say I'm working with a reactive dog, this dog has a history of behaving in like having the set of behaviors that we are using shorthand to describe as reactivity, as opposed to saying.

This dog will be reactive forever and ever as opposed to assuming future behavior. Right. And I think that's where we get into the most trouble is when the, the label shifts from a shorthand for past behavior to an identity description of assuming what this animal or this human will do forever and ever.

[00:35:21] Ellen: Yeah. I think that's where I see clients get. really hopeless. When they're, when in my external assessment, like there's a lot that could be different is when we have gotten to the point where that's just who they are.

They are reactive, they are aggressive, they are,

people don't say they are separation anxiety, but like the same, the same thing. And so when we are able to shift that. Look, defense mechanisms are valid, and if you are drowning and you need to take a break, and that is the only way that you are gonna go put on your own oxygen mask, I'm not taking that from you.

But if we're finding that we're feeling really hopeless, shifting to, they have a really hard time with people,

they've really struggled to be home alone,

Instead of making it about a diagnosis and more a shorthand description of what we see. Can be really, really beneficial and can add some more of that, that hope or that we could influence something, we, we can make a difference.

cause behavior isn't all internal. That's one of the other beautiful things is like none of us are 100% ever going to respond in a predictable way. And so if you think that. This is just who they are and nothing can change. Of course, you don't wanna try things. You don't have a belief that that change is possible.

[00:36:40] Emily: And to be fair, especially to behavior professionals who Are aware of this and, and live in it. I think one of the reasons that this becomes so tricky to navigate is because we do have a saying in this field that the best indicator of pa, of future behavior is past behavior. And that is true.

And also that doesn't mean that labels assuming all future behavior are correct. What that means is, if it were, if it, if that were just true across the board that the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior, there would be no point to our profession, right? What that actually means is if you set this learner up to fail in the future.

They are going to fail in the same way that they have failed in the past. What that doesn't mean is it's impossible we can, that if we change their environment and we give them skills, they will be much less likely to fail in the future. Right. So that where, where you can, we can influence. Future behavior.

We can give learners skills and enrich their lives and meet their needs so that they aren't in put in those situations anymore moving forward. And that is how we can be effective. And that is where the labels do become self-limiting beliefs. Because you're not giving yourself or that, or your learner. The opportunity to gain those skills and, and make those environmental changes and make sure their needs are met. But at the same time, we have to be aware that if we ever put them in that situation again, of dep deprivation, desperation, high chronic stress, it is reasonable to assume, or it is very likely that.

When they fail, they'll fail in the same way they failed in the past. And so I think that's the, the balance, talking about like nuance and wishing things were simple. That's an incredibly nuanced discussion and yet it's a really important one for behavior professionals to wrap their heads around because this is how we balance, strike that balance between understanding what, what our goals are and what is realistic.

While not. Slapping a bunch of labels that can be really limiting and restrictive and unfair onto a learner.

[00:38:57] Ellen: Change behavior. We have to change conditions, and one of the conditions we can change is how we are approaching the situation.

It can make a big difference.

[00:39:04] Emily: Yeah, for sure. So what does this look like? How do we apply this in real life for pet parents. Start describing what you see instead of what you judge. So, for example, instead of saying, my dog is anxious, you can try my dog pants and pastes when I grab the keys. You're giving yourself that extra context and you're really describing what you mean by the label anxious. Or instead of saying, I'm a bad pet parent, or a bad trainer, or whatever it is that we think of ourselves, try, I am learning what works for my dog for pet professionals. I think it's a good idea to audit your own labels, both the ones that you give to your clients and the ones that you give to yourself.

I would say also the ones that you give to your clients' pets, all of the labels that you re regularly use in your practice. Take the time to operationalize those labels and very clearly define what you mean by those terms. I think that is a really good practice for anybody in this profession.

[00:40:06] Ellen: So what this might look like, identify one label you've been using about your pet or yourself. Leica, practically perfect in every way. Write a descriptive sentence instead. So Leica will go to any number of locations. Hop in the car. Laughs. Dogs laugh, y'all. This is, this is not I'm not just making this up. Dogs laugh. This is a behavior. She will laugh. She will greet people with a loose, wiggly body. She will come in and investigate and turn to the side and see curve for them and then walk away. She will sniff the ground. She will play in the grass. She will find the singular tennis ball that is caught behind a fence at a park and take me there no less than six times.

That is what practically perfect looks like in one type of context for her. Then notice how it changes your understanding about her. So I know that she is practically perfect in every way for me and my life, and the way that we live and navigate things together. I also know that she deserves to have somebody who supports her when things are stressful, 

[00:41:19] Emily: So as a final thought, just remember that labels aren't the enemy. They're not intrinsically bad or wrong, they're just words. They're just a tool that helps us. Get through a conversation in a reasonable amount of time. They're there for the sake of efficiency. But the more descriptive and flexible we can be, the more compassionate we become.

And also the more hopeful we become, the more we are able to clearly see a path forward instead of. Assuming that this is how it's always gonna be because that's just who they are or that's just how I am. And for behavior professionals, if you are just struggle busting with imposter syndrome, We help you close the gap between where you currently are and where you want to be.

[00:42:13] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony. 

[00:43:05] Ellen: That's a label. Poor choices. Putting ourselves into scenarios where we're gonna get hurt.

[00:43:11] Emily: It's true. My label for Miley right now is way too quiet. 

And what I mean by that is

[00:43:17] Ellen: Uh

[00:43:17] Emily: Hear her playing in her cardboard mountains, which means she's probably up to something that she shouldn't be. It's probably destroying something. 

[00:43:27] Ellen: Trying, probably gonna make your life hard